September Goings-On...

...in Singapore and Korea. Click on thumbnail to see larger picture.

the guys are in the taxi behind me laughing at me as i stick my hand out the window of the taxi to take a picture.  they were worried a passing bus would take my hand off.  they were probably right to be worried.	the taxi driver takes pity on us when he realizes we can't find the restaurant at the address he was told to take us to.  he is the guy on the handphone.	so instead we go to benihana!!!  of course i'm the only one who's been to a benihana before.  it was pretty good except we got korean fried rice (with kimchi).  not that that's a bad thing...
map of the subway station.  note the 8 escalators.  singapore could use some of these.	talking through some mechanical problems with the daewoo team.	the view from the 10th floor of daewoo's office.
note poor mr. cho holding his head...damn, these hp engineers are never satisfied!!	shopping for coach purses in itaewon.  send me your orders now!!

i have been going to seoul for about a year.  when i first started visiting daewoo it was october '99 and the weather was really cold.  now it's october again and it's nice to see the cool weather return.  can't wait for the snow.  finally!  a reason to wear a coat!  mr jo from the factory asked if this was my first trip to seoul.  ohhhh noooo.  i come every month, sometimes twice.  jonathan said, "people around here probably think i have a second wife."  

although i don't speak korean, at all, often the korean guys use just enough english words so i can tell what they're talking about.  so i'll jump in and respond and they 'll say, "you know korean??"  always good for a laugh.  as an american i find it easier sometimes to deal with koreans than chinese.  i hate to sound sterotypical but this has been my experience ove the last year.  when the koreans are pissed off, you can see it in their faces and hear it in their raised voices.  as an american i can easily recognise that and respond to it and deal with it right there--very similar to american style--"everyone in your face all the time."  but with my chinese colleagues the signs of conflict are much more subtle.  and you can't really go up to them later and directly ask, are we having a problem?  you have to know someone fairly well in order to read them.  of course within any given culture ,you always find a wide spectrum of communication styles.

got a chance to talk with kibong nam a bit more on the last trip.  his english is pretty good.  he had actually moved to toronto, canada to go to international business school but his father's business went bankrupt, and couldn't pay for kibong's tuition, so he had to return to korea.  that was 7 years ago.  now he feels he has lost his chance to get out of korea. 

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